When I say they, I mean DI Dave Donnelly; Myles Geraghty had taken two days' Christmas leave to go to a race meeting at Kempton Park, where his brother-in-law had a horse running in the George VI Steeplechase. Tommy had called Dave as soon as Steno had fled from Leopardstown. Dave was the man on the spot, and thanks to Tommy, and eventually, to me, he had enough inside information and witness testimony to close the case. I made sure Martha O'Connor got a blow-by-blow account, and suggested to her that if anyone wanted to run a story ridiculing the "Omega Man" theory, that would be no bad thing. Martha's paper ran it front page every day for a week, until I almost felt a little sorry for Geraghty. And the brother-in-law's horse came home eighth in a field of nine.
Dave and Carmel are still sharing a home, and to the best of my knowledge, a bed, although I'm happy to say my knowledge of that is strictly limited to Dave having grunted, "Everything's grand thanks," as a way to close the subject down. He's taking the family to Disneyland at Easter, the news of which was certainly enough to cure me of any residual envy of family life.
Nobody told the truth about F. X. Tyrrell, out of respect and solicitude for Karen Tyrrell, but that doesn't mean that people didn't know, in the way news like that always spreads to those it needs to and to some it doesn't, in Ireland at any rate. Tyrrell did not hang himself for shame, but he was found dead within six months anyway; nobody at the stables or the stud farm would work with him; no one in racing wanted to know him; his life's achievement as a trainer and a breeder had been irrevocably disgraced; the very thing that had kept him alive, the only thing he had ever really loved, was the thing he could no longer work with: horses. His doctors said it was a burst aortic aneurysm. But, insofar as I have any insight into the opaque character of the man, I believe he died of a broken heart.
Vincent Tyrrell did not have to be quietly retired from his parish; his cancer did that work for him. I visited him in hospital not long before he died because I had so many questions that only he could answer: what kind of hold had his brother possessed over him that Vincent should sire a child with his sister, or enable F.X. to abuse boys in Vincent's care? What had happened in that cottage after their mother died, the two boys alone with their father? Did Vincent save his brother's life to make him suffer more? Or did he hope his son would kill him first? Had he been leading me by the nose all along? I didn't get any answers. I don't know if I expected any. Maybe there were none to be had. In the end, it was a not-at-all sacred mystery. It was the last breath of a dying breed. It was the price of blood. I left Father Vincent Tyrrell dreaming over the day's racing in The Irish Field, working the race cards with his fingers like rosary beads.
Regina Tyrrell, fearing that Karen would be taken away from her, left the country with the child. I don't know where they are. Every time I think of them, I recall F. X. Tyrrell's belief in the bloodline, his creed that blood and breed are the beginning and the end. I hope his granddaughter can find a future that will prove him wrong.
After a lot of digging, Martha O'Connor discovered that the Tyrrell family name had originally been Butler. And after some digging of my own in registration offices in Wicklow and Kildare, I established that John Butler, F. X. Tyrrell's father, was a distant cousin of the Butlers that settled in North Wicklow. The Butlers that eat their young, that settle disputes with sulfuric acid, the Butlers Tommy Owens called "a tribe of savages."
The Butlers had an eventful Christmas also, as did the Leonards. On Christmas night, Joe Leonard came out of his house to chase off two young men in sportswear and hooded tops who were messing around with his mother-in-law's blue BMW, the car he had seemed so in awe of. The men were joined by two others, and they refused to stop. Instead, they picked up their attack, kicking the vehicle and scraping the bodywork with keys and knives. When Joe Leonard put himself between them and the car, they kicked him and stabbed him and left him bleeding in the street. Joe Leonard died later that night in Loughlinstown Hospital. The whole incident was recorded on one of the tapes Leonard had hired me to set running to find out who was trashing his neighborhood. The tapes were admitted as evidence, and the Guards were able to get a case brought against the men, who weren't men at alclass="underline" three of them were fifteen and one sixteen. They were too young to be named, but three of them were from the extended Butler family. None showed any remorse; they all felt Leonard was reckless and foolhardy for trying to defend his property. Dave told me what the sixteen-year-old said.
"What the fuck did he have to get in our way for? I mean, he should have known. Family man, he shouldn't've been taking risks like that."
He said that over and over again, each time with mounting rage.
I went up to see the Leonards. I went to the removal, and to the funeral. All I can remember are the weeping children clinging to their mother, and their mother not being able to walk very well, and my wondering was it from grief, or from the fact that the kids were clinging to her, and wondering why I was wondering. I still have the picture on my phone of the Leonards wishing me a Merry Christmas. I find I look at it almost every day.
KAREN TYRRELL STOOD at the far end of the room with her back to me. She faced a big sash window that looked out across a paddock to the river. She was working at something, and when I got closer I saw that it was a painting. She had a table by the window, and around it on the wall, sketches and oils of the same view: the paddock, always with two horses, and two trees just far enough apart that they never touched, and the river. The river was altered in the paintings so that its flow caught the eye: it seemed as if the horses, and the viewer, yearned to be taken by the river, to be caught up in its current, to escape, while the trees stood upright, implacable, season in, season out, shedding and sprouting and never touching. I watched for a while as she worked, very deliberate, very careful, incorporating snow into the scene as it fell in real life. I set my face to try to feel as little as possible, to think of nothing but the picture she worked on and the scene it represented. There were no horses in the paddock today, but there were two in Karen Tyrrell's painting, of course. I stood and watched that little girl work, oblivious to the horrors that had taken place in her house that day, to the legacy of horror she had inherited, stood and prayed that the Guards would get here before she asked me what had happened, and if not, that I would find the heart to know what to say.
She turned around, and I almost gasped at her tear-stained face, at the dark hair, her mother's hair, at the startling eyes, one blue, one brown, her father's eyes, at her clear, confident gaze, as if we were at the very beginning of things.
"Where's my mother?" she said.
About the Author
DECLAN HUGHES has worked for more than twenty years in the theater in Dulin as director and playwright. In 1984, he cofounded Rough Magic, Ireland 's leading independent theater company. He has been writer in association with the Abbey Theatre and remains an artistic associate of Rough Magic. He lives in Dublin, Ireland. This is his third novel.
